The Power of Cooking + A Minty Quinoa Breakfast Parfait

I always laugh when I hear people referring to me as “the” One Ingredient Chef. When I originally chose this website name, it was not to give myself that title. The way I see it, anyone who learns the art of cooking healthy, unprocessed food is a One Ingredient Chef.

My goal has always been to help us fight back against the massive health epidemics that are related to processed food. It’s a sad reality that, today, more people in the developed world are dying because of the types of food we choose to eat than anything else. For all our medical advancements, diet-related diseases (i.e. disease caused by junk food) are the number one killer in America and many parts of the world.

The thing is, we all know this. We all know that processed junk food is bad for us. The last thing we need in 2015 is more information or another person telling us that we “should” be eating healthy. Really, our struggles with processed food are because very few people show us “how” to do better…

“How can I make a healthy dinner every night when I don’t get home from work until after dark?”

“How can I buy healthy food on my limited budget?”

“How can I fight off cravings when all I want is a piece of chocolate cake?”

My view has always been that the most effective way to solve this problem (the most powerful “how”) is through the kitchen. At the end of the day, real progress comes from action, not just knowledge. You can be the smartest nutritionist in the world, but if you and your family aren’t cooking healthy food on a regular basis, it won’t make any difference.

It sounds so simple, but COOKING is our most powerful weapon in the fight against processed food.

When you prepare your own food with whole, fresh ingredients, it’s nearly guaranteed to be unprocessed and so much healthier. This is why cooking has always been the medium for me to share the message. That’s why I’ve shared recipe ideas for these last 100+ weeks in a row – Not because I’m the One Ingredient Chef, but so that YOU can be the One Ingredient Chef and use cooking as your most powerful weapon in this fight against processed food.

If you’re on my email newsletter, you might have heard that something big is coming soon. In less than a week, I’ll be opening registration to the One Ingredient Transformation Course. This is an epic 8-week program that teaches you the “how” of eating unprocessed food and guides you through my exact process one step at a time.

This is something totally new. It’s a digital course that has a ton of new resources: 120 pages of content, videos, assignments, dozens of recipes, and an interactive community of like-minded students to help you stay on track with this healthy eating program.

Of course, all these resources come back to the kitchen. Everything I’m going to teach you in this course is designed around my core mission: to help you become healthier than ever before by cooking the best food of your life. The course covers everything from organizing your kitchen, grocery shopping for “One Ingredient” foods, cooking healthy with limited time, fighting off cravings, and so much more.

There’s also some great new recipes inside this course, and today I have to share one of them with you has a sneak preview. It’s a minty quinoa breakfast parfait, and it’s one of the most delicious things I have ever tasted. Fluffy quinoa infused with mint and a touch of maple syrup, whipped frozen banana, and berries & nuts, all layered together.

Recipes like this are perfect examples of what being a One Ingredient Chef is all about: simple ingredients thrown together in minutes to create the most delicious meals. It truly is one of my favorite recipes and I hope you enjoy it! 😀

P.S. If you aren’t already, I’d recommend joining my email newsletter at this point. I’ll be sending out more info on the new One Ingredient Transformation Course later this week, including a special early-bird registration offer. You can sign up (and get my free One Ingredient Manifesto as well) through the form at the top of my homepage (here).

Makes 2 parfaits

Ingredients:

2 large frozen bananas

2 cups cooked quinoa

2 tablespoons maple syrup

2 sprigs of mint

1 pinch of salt

1/2 cup mixed berries

1/4 cup walnuts

Step One

Cook the quinoa according to package instructions (typically 2 parts water to 1 part quinoa). Once the water is fully absorbed and your quinoa is all fluffy and beautiful, mix with a tiny drizzle of maple syrup, salt, and a few mint leaves very finely minced.

Step Two

Take your frozen bananas out of the freezer (and make sure you peeled them before freezing!). Slice them into thin rounds and add to a food processor. Pulse until the bananas are whipped into something similar to ice cream. In fact, this is identical to my One Ingredient Ice Cream recipe.

Step Three

In clear serving dishes, add layers of quinoa, whipped banana, and berries & walnuts (in that order) until the dish is full. Garnish with a sprig of mint and serve immediately for best results.

Thanks, Goedele! I hope you enjoy it 🙂 YES the bananas need to be peeled first. If they aren’t peeled, the peels will freeze solid and they’ll need to be thawed again before they can be used, which kind of ruins the point of *freezing* the bananas in the first place 😀

Oh, I find that I can peel them after they’ve been frozen. Maybe I’ll leave them for a minute or two, but then it’s not that hard to get the peel off. I sometimes need to use a knife to get some last bits off, but that’s not too bad.
The real problem, though, is frozen fingers!

Hi Andrew! I read your blogs and recipes, see that you use maple syrup a lot as a sub for sugar ( Im a big fan of maple syrup anyway). However, I just wonder if you would ever use honey as another replacement? I’m just curious anyway. Thanks!
Van

Hi Van! Well, that’s a tricky question. I’m not *hugely* opposed to honey, especially for health benefits, but this is a vegan cooking blog and vegans don’t eat honey, so I wouldn’t use it here or in my own cooking (though, I personally wouldn’t freak out about it the same way as something like milk or eggs).